Daily Archives: Nov 15, 2012

Think of Buenos Aires’ chic Avenida Alvear and you think of a rarefied world of timeless elegance, luxury boutiques and swanky hotels. Not something altogether more tacky: a supermarket.

Yet that may be the way things are going in the Argentine capital’s toniest shopping street, which has seen an exodus of big-name brands as a result of the Argentine government’s import restriction policy. Read more

Here are a few back-of-the-envelope things to think about as we wait for Argentina to spell out its position in its brief to the court in the holdout saga on Friday:

1. This is, remember, a case in which there could be a technical default if money Argentina uses to pay the holders of bonds it exchanged in debt swaps in 2005 and 2010 – when it restructured nearly 93 per cent of the $100bn on which it defaulted in 2001 – is diverted to pay the litigants in the New York case, led by US hedge fund Elliott. Read more

Zimbabwe hosted its inaugural diamond conference on Monday and Tuesday to promote the industry, but instead has become embroiled in fresh controversy around the country’s diamond sales and tax revenues.

There are conflicting reports around diamond sales. While the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) and Ministry of Mines lament that sales are being hit by sanctions, critics argue that the companies are actually making huge sales but looting is rife. Read more

Banks in Ecuador are bracing themselves for a new tax on the sector designed to boost welfare payments by about $150m a year.

A bill paving the way for the tax is expected before Ecuador’s congress in the next few weeks, where it is likely to be waved through by legislators hoping to be returned to congress at general elections in February. Read more

There’s nothing like talking to private equity folk to get a positive take on a country’s problems. Take the level of English spoken in Brazil, for example. According to the UK-based emerging markets fund Actis, less than 3 per cent of Brazilians speak English fluently. For most international companies in the country, it’s just one more obstacle to doing business. For Actis, it’s a great chance to make money. Read more

Another episode in the collapse of Interbolsa, Colombia’s biggest brokerage: local investment firm Tribeca Asset Management has decided it will not, after all, snap up its investment fund division. Read more

Two years ago, the world of microfinance was plunged into crisis by a wave of suicides among poor people in rural India unable to pay their spiralling debts. In the worst hit areas, lenders including SKS Microfinance, India’s only listed company in the sector, were ordered to halt operations.

Gazprom has been putting the final investment agreements in place for the South Stream project, clearing the way for construction of the 63bn cubic metres a year pipeline to Europe to begin next month. Never mind that demand for Russian gas in Europe is falling, or the $19bn cost of South Stream. The pipeline will help free Gazprom from dependence on Ukrainian transit pipelines and improve European energy security. Read more

Algeria’s powerful armed forces, which already run Africa’s biggest defence budget, have requested a 14 per cent spending increase for next year, as the country prepares for security threats on its southern border.

The eurozone recession is biting hard in central Europe. According to flash data published on Thursday, third-quarter GDP fell in Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic compared with the previous three months, and rose marginally in Bulgaria.

The only country of the five reporting figures to do reasonably well is – ironically – eurozone member Slovakia, which posted quarter-on-quarter growth of 2.2 per cent. With Poland, which publishes its numbers on a different cycle, also slowing, the next few months look difficult for the region. Read more

There comes a time when a company needs a helping hand, and Poland’s Zelmer, country’s largest maker of smaller white goods, is getting one in the form of a 608m zlotys ($187m) takeover by Germany’s Bosch-Siemens Hausgeraete. Read more

India’s latest 2G telecoms auction was, as beyondbrics reported, a giant flop – it raised barely a quarter of what the government had forecast, as operators balked at what they felt were sky-high reserve prices.

Ratings agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor’s have both threatened sovereign credit downgrades if India doesn’t get its fiscal house in order, and the $7.3bn the government had been planning to raise through the auction was meant to be, at least partly, a measure of its ability to close up its massive fiscal deficit – estimated to be around 5.9 per cent of GDP. Read more

Thursday’s picks from the BB team: dynastic decay in the Communist Party of China; Cnooc as China’s Gazprom; and Turkey backtracks on its economic and social progress. Plus: Liberia’s opposition face an uphill struggle; macroeconomic data spells gloom for India; and Bashar al-Assad can’t be compared to a hero of America’s Civil War.Read more

We are nearly eight hours into the decade-long rule of Xi Jinping, so it seems a perfect time to pass definitive judgment on his record as China’s leader.

Ok, maybe it is a bit soon. But that is not stopping the punditocracy – yes, including, us here at the FT – from making predictions about what Xi and his colleagues will accomplish over the next ten years. However, the evidence available is so limited that it can be interpreted in two diametrically opposed ways. Read more